Senior Journalist, Women's Football News - BBC Sport Senior Journalist, Women's Football News - BBC Sport

Freelancers are eligible to apply for an internal role if they are on a Worker Contract and they have worked continuously for 6 months. If they have worked for less than 6 months continuously or have a break of 3 weeks or more between engagements, they must seek Divisional HR approval to apply for an internal role prior to submitting an application.

Job Introduction

Are you passionate and knowledgeable about women's news?

Can you help BBC Sport tell some of the biggest football news stories of the day to an audience of millions?

The ideal candidate would be an experienced, driven digital journalist with a track record of chasing and breaking women's football news including club news, player interviews, transfer deals, and writing about ongoing themes & talking points related to the women's game.

You would be working primarily to the BBC Sport website and app, including its social media platforms, working closely with the Digital Journalism team to drive the daily football news habit with your content and ideas.

The candidate will need good contacts in the game and be able to get under the skin of WSL clubs in particular to improve BBC Sport's football news coverage in an extremely competitive media landscape.

You will be able to demonstrate an understanding of core BBC editorial standards and values of impartial journalism, trust, accuracy and creativity. You would have an awareness and experience of compliance and responsible well-sourced journalism on difficult stories, fully observing BBC editorial guidelines.

You will know the strengths of the BBC Sport website and the needs of its audience - and how this role can help contribute to the department's stretching targets for digital growth.

The ideal candidate would need to be a strong communicator to help bring different parts of the BBC together around key content and stories. They must be able to demonstrate leadership and ownership of the day-to-day news agenda in women's football, delivering a consistent volume of news. They would be able to show a range and breadth of writing in news, live and insightful feature formats.

You would also work with teams across the rest of BBC Sport to deliver football content to other platforms and programmes.

We want BBC Sport's output to reflect and understand the audiences we serve - for example, the different geographical regions of the UK and the experience of people from underrepresented groups (eg people from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, people with lived experience of disability, individuals within the LGBTQ+ community and those from lower socio economic groups). We are therefore actively seeking individuals with skills or experience that can help contribute towards ensuring we maximise the diversity of our coverage and content.

Main Responsibilities

Responsibilities would include some of the following:

• Taking a leadership role on the news coverage of Women's Football across the BBC Sport department - on the editorial agenda, being an expert voice and building relationships.


• Working collaboratively with a team of BBC Sport football news journalists focused on producing football news stories, largely for the BBC Sport website, app and social media platforms.


• Alert editors to breaking news. Breaking quick, accurate, news stories under pressure and to a high editorial standard, demonstrating robust, well-sourced journalism, and fully observing the BBC editorial guidelines. Check and advise against coverage when necessary.


• Communicating with Digital Journalism team each day to make sure BBC Sport is on top of the women's football news agenda and driving ideas for our daily news coverage


• You will also be expected to have existing contacts within the sport and develop more contacts over time


• Maintain regular and clear communication with planners, commissioners and editors, supplying items for the sports news diary, coming up with a stream of realistic coverage ideas and working jointly with editors on helping plan coverage


• Provide regular advice on women's football news developments, guidance on agency or newspaper stories and any off-record briefings from clubs or authorities


• Regularly attending press conferences, media events, interview opportunities and some live games to gather material for output, produce digital content and build relationships


• Contributing to the daily football live texts with regular updates and expert analysis


• Writing on the whistle match reports, live text entries, post-match follow-up articles, and in-depth, insightful feature articles


• Gathering material and producing video and audio content for social media, website and linear platforms


• Working collaboratively with BBC colleagues in radio, TV, gathering and regional teams to source and produce women's football news stories


• Being receptive to feedback and good at building positive working relationships with peers


• This is not a shift-based role. This role is on a variable shift pattern which means it responds to unpredictable output or editorial needs - driven by stories and breaking news. This role will involve unpredictable, regular evening and weekend work.
  
  You should be able to write quickly, accurately and succinctly for a digital audience, including a good understanding of how to optimise storytelling for mobile phones.


• Sound editorial judgement and the ability to make quick decisions under pressure


• A passion and excitement for the relentless football news agenda, transfer news, debate and discussion, audience talking points and holding clubs to account


• Engaged with social media, with an understanding of what football fans are talking about, what they want to read, and how you might produce social media video content for BBC Sport


• Interested with the current news and sport news agenda and have proven editorial judgement and experience with editorial compliance


• Mindset is vital: we want resilience, knowledge, enthusiasm, ideas and creativity coupled with good communication and organisational skills.


• Able to build and maintain effective working relationships with a range of people, especially external contacts, representing the BBC professionally at all times


• Demonstrate a commitment to improving diversity in the BBC and understand how individual differences can benefit the workplace and output.
  
  The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.


We don't focus simply on what we do - we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you've read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC - whether that's to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

Salary: If a range is being advertised: £42,000 - £52,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: 1 x Continuing/Permanent role

Location: Office Base is Salford: This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working

We're happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.


Excellent career progression - the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.

Unrivalled training and development opportunities - our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.

Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.